03 December, 2016

‘Killers having lunch’: The real life Wolves of Wall Street

Part
7

‘Killers
having lunch’

A Yukom
corporate video shows top-performing staff receiving BMWs tied up
with ribbons last summer, and in November 2015 Yukom flew some 30
employees to the Greek island of Rhodes for a holiday. Yukom says the
cars were leased, not given, to “excellent and ethical
employees”.

In March
this year Lee Elbaz took 10 of her Yukom team to see Jordan Belfort –
the man convicted of a $100 million fraud who the film Wolf of Wall
Street was based on – give a talk in Tel Aviv.

One salesman
posted pictures on Facebook of the Yukom team at a restaurant with
the caption “killers having lunch” – a phrase used in
the film. Another Yukom salesman is currently advertising on
Facebook for new English-speaking Yukom staff who “love money
more than anything”.

David said
Yukom staff advised clients on trading strategy, carried out trades
on their customers’ behalf, and managed customer accounts. He also
claimed the employees decided whether or not to allow clients to
withdraw their money when they asked to.

“When a
client places a withdrawal your job as a rep is to prevent that
happening,” David said. “If the client is really difficult
they get forwarded to the brand manager.” The brand managers
got bigger salaries if they persuaded clients to stay, he claimed.

Yukom’s
company lawyer denied this, insisting the companies which owned the
binary options websites were the ones which managed customer accounts
and made the decisions on withdrawals.

David also
claimed it was the job of one Yukom staff member to persuade banks
and credit card companies not to refund money to customers who
claimed to have been defrauded.

Herzog’s
lawyer told the Bureau “The employees of Linkopia and Yukom have
never prevented a client’s withdrawal and will not provide services
to any broker who does so”. Binarybook has “performed over
19,500 withdrawal requests in the last 12 months,” he said,
adding that “[they] are processed within 24 hours; any other
claim is untrue.”

US
authorities have banned binary options call centres targeting their
citizens. Earlier this year one operator, Banc de Binary, paid $11
million to US authorities to settle claims of illegal activities in
the country.

But both
Haji and David claim some BinaryBook personnel sought US clients in
breach of American law. Haji says he personally called clients in the
USA when he was at Linkopia. David says the night shift in his call
centre was known as the “money shift” because that was when rich
US clients could be targeted.

BinaryBook
features on a US government list of organisations that authorities
have “reason to believe are soliciting and accepting funds from
U.S. residents” illegally.

Herzog’s
lawyer said Yukom had never solicited US clients and that the brokers
the company worked with did not allow people with US binary options
accounts to access their websites.

“If a
person places a trade, and loses, he needs to take responsibility for
placing the trade,” he said. “People enjoy learning the
capital markets and perform[ing] trading; The platform provider
cannot be accountable for their losses and is not the clients’
“insurance company”.”